The midterm Republican rout in Congress may seem like just yesterday, but one prominent freshman has packed more into his first 18 months on the Hill than some lawmakers do a few terms in.

Tapped for a leadership position from the minute he stepped into Washington, Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), along with Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), was chosen to be a Class of 2010 liaison to the Republican House chiefs. He’s also on the Rules Committee and a member or co-chairman of 20 caucuses, including the conservative Republican Study Committee.

“Two arms simply aren’t enough when everyone’s pulling on them from different directions,” Scott told PJM, reflecting on this challenging yet productive and sometimes “painful” term.

“I enjoy the role of pulling people together while remaining committed to conservatism,” he added. “I’m having the time of my life in having to face some of the greatest crises that I didn’t even know were there.”

It’s included sponsoring more than 40 bills, including a resolution to rescind funding for ObamaCare and another to dial back National Labor Relations Board meddling in the workplace.

And it’s also included pulling together last Thursday’s Revitalizing America conference, which was open to the public and brought together business leaders and lawmakers to chat for more than seven hours about how to really put Americans to work and foster the entrepreneurial spirit.

“So often we live in a bubble on this side of the Potomac and the bubble doesn’t always include the job creators,” Scott said, noting that he conducted quarterly CEO summits when he served in government back in his home state.

In addition to members who served on panels, other lawmakers wandered in throughout the day to hear the discussion that hopefully, said Scott, created that spark of understanding needed to craft business-friendly policies.

“I think we saw that,” he said.

It just so happened that his Hill event preceded by a day the release of May’s disappointing Labor Department numbers, showing much lower than projected job growth and an uptick in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent.

And the week before meeting to discuss Revitalizing America, Scott met with the face of the American economy at one of his town hall meetings in Charleston.

“One of the great challenges is the number of job seekers has fallen off, as well,” Scott said. “There’s a way to play games with numbers before the election.”

He predicted that the Obama administration could tweak the unemployment to begin with a 7 by the time the presidential election arrives, only to bounce back up after November.

“I believe that’s where the administration is trying to drive us to, even if it’s an artificial number,” Scott warned.

The House Oversight Committee is holding a highly anticipated hearing Wednesday about the integrity of the Labor Department’s reporting of job statistics, and whether political appointees in the department have undue influence over the process used by the department to collect and disseminate data.

Elected with Tea Party support in the grass-roots and from conservatives such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Scott has met the challenge of bringing both sides to the table in this sensitive political environment.

“While some people are looking for compromise, I’m really looking for common ground,” he said.

On May 24, Scott and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (Calif.), a Blue Dog Democrat, announced the formation of the bipartisan Congressional Regulatory Review Caucus. Citing the 79,000 pages of new federal regulations issued in 2011, Scott said the effort to compose a body that would sit down and judge the merits of these rules as helpful or job-killing was in the making for a while — and long overdue.

“I think what people are really driving toward is measurable change in reasonable time,” Scott said. “…It will take help from every corner of the country, even those I may not philosophically agree with.”

“I’m going to bring those folks to the table and find a way to move the ship forward,” he added.

But Scott hasn’t indiscriminately taken a seat at all tables. The first African-American Republican elected in South Carolina since Reconstruction decided against joining the Congressional Black Caucus, saying at the time it highlighted the divisions that he sought to erase. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), also elected in 2010, did join the CBC, saying the conservative voice needed to be represented in the caucus.

How is Scott’s relationship with the CBC now?

“It was pretty chilly for a long time,” he said. “I won’t say that the chill’s out of the air. We have at least a cordial interaction.”

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) dropped by Scott’s Revitalizing America conference. Scott highlights CBC member Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) — tied for first with 19 other House Democrats in National Journal’s 2012 rankings of the most liberal members of Congress — who participated in one of the Revitalizing America panels.

Scott said he and Clarke have shared common ground on at least one key issue stemming from their backgrounds: Both grew up in single-parent, impoverished households. Both are members of the House of Representatives’ freshman class.

“I about flunked out of high school as a freshman,” Scott said. “We both found through education we could open doors we could never believe to be open.”

Owner of an insurance company and a partner in a real estate firm, Scott is among the members of Congress trying to parlay their business acumen into encouraging business-friendly legislative environments that encourage growth.

Hence, Revitalizing America. “Sometimes it seems like if you’re not willing to bring the biggest spotlight to problems then you’re not working on the problems,” Scott said.

His greatest achievement of this first term, though, may be adherence to a credo that Scott brought to the Beltway: a vow “not to let the system run me.”

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

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1.
Terry in GA

Good idea and a good job at encouraging it to be brought forward. For too long, we have been unable to trust that those we elected and sent to Washington were honestly and honorably negotiating in our best interests. Thankfully, an explosive outburst of corruption and behaviors that do not reflect the greatness of our nation brought us to a critical need to flush out the old and replace them with new. We have been blessed with many great new members in Washington who are willing to stand together as a wall of concrete blocks to keep out corruption. It takes vigilance and seems thankless, but trust me when I say that WE APPRECIATE YOU and every effort you and your colleagues have made to preserve, protect and defend our republic.

We are praying for you and your efforts. Keep up the good fight. You are leading us into the future that our children and grandchildren will inherit. They deserve the best we can give to them.

Congressman Scott and Congressman West have been presented with most of the Sheiff Joe Arpaio criminal evidence that proves Barack Hussein Obama has been flaunting an April 27th, 2011 computer generated birth certificate, a forged selective service registration and a fraudulent SS# that was flagged by E-verify. I personally sent both Scott and West information concering these issues and they both refuse to deal with the criminal activity. It didn’t take them long to fall in line with the rest of the corrupt representatives. I have no use for men and women who seem to think that crime being committed by the POTUS should go unpunished. You would think that they would have had Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his lead investigator visit with them and explain the criminal evidence they have. Nothing but silence!!

Why would any black man join the CBC? By its very name it is a racist organization concerned about skin melanin and other collectivist dogma’s than with real values and the merit of personal character. Cl. West is a fool for joining. It’s akin to joining the NAZI party thinking that you would be able to change their minds to embrace equality and capitalism.

because we must be segregated!!!!! next you’ll be wanting politicians and the media to quit labeling people as [insert ethnicity/religion] american and then all you would have is americans. how in the world do you expect our intellectually superior elites to rule us if we are not divided into as many subsets that they can think of to divide us?????

Exactly. He’s not a fool, he just has a different approach. I agree with Scott’s approach, and I would have preferred that West had taken the same approach, but I’m sure not going to call him a sellout or a fool because of it.

Congressman Scott is an evangelical Christian and a product of the Tea Party. He has already been corrupted by the system known as the “good ole boys club.” He should be ashamed of himself, especially since he is a Christian and should be very sensitive to the criminal activity that Barack Hussein Obama is involved in. He has been made aware of all the evidence that has been collected by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his lead investigator Mike Zullo. He refuses to act upon that information. He is no better than the one he replaced.

I wonder if Scott will run for the GOP Senate nomination in 2014 against Lindsey Graham. Graham might be a good Republican Senator if he were representing a northeastern state, but he is not sufficiently conservative for SC.

Simply restoring and indexing incentives for US employers to fly in US citizen candidates for interviews, relocate new-hires (and retained) US citizen Employees as needed, and for investments in training newly-hired and retained US citizen employees would go a lot further than any bills we’ve seen proposed in congress over the last 10 years. The aim here is simply to neutralize the incentives that were created by congress since 1986 to bring in cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics… and that distored markets to encourage bodyshopping domestically rather than real hires.